Quote:
Originally Posted by Katie1
IF the sdcards were such a Bad idea WHY do Nooks have them? Why di Sopny ereaders have them? & Kobos???
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I guess, it's all about the respective business model and the strength of position.
Sony obviously did fail with their own bookstore. Hence content hadn't been their main source of income/profit and they had to try everything to at least sell their hardware (= open it to a wider public, not linked solely to the Sony bookstore).
Nooks obviously did fair even worse than Sony readers.
Kobo probably is somewhere in the middle between Sony/B&N and Amazon: Not disappearing quickly, but far from being dominant either.
Meaning:
Amazon pretty much seems to dominate the market. And personally, I tend to understand and accept their dominance: Great customer service, pretty clear strategy for growth, free 3G globally (massive effort, to negotiate with telecom providers globally), early in the market, easy to buy content globally and so on.
As the market leader, they can build their strategy instead of struggling for survival.
And they openly state their strategy:
- Growth before (quick) profits.
- Focusing on content and considering hardware a mere vehicle for content sales.
- The future is in the cloud.
As they focus on the cloud, they deem large internal storage unnecessary.
And they don't want to open the hardware to 3rd party content, but bind customers into their own ecosystem.
It's certainly a pain, that one can't use Kindles and free 3G and buy from other vendors as well, especially in ePUB format.
But from a business perspective, I absolutely can understand (and admire) their approach.
On the other hand, I never understood B&N for example. Why did I have to use VPN to buy my books when in Germany? How come, Kobo and Amazon did solve lots of those international hurdles and B&N did not? I easily can imagine, B&N only covering the American market (and UK later on) loosing half the business potential Amazon has in Europe alone...